The submarine? It flows. Here is the military jewel that embarrasses Spain

There is a strange story, which embarrbades the Spanish Navy probably born of a distracted engineer: the submarine that can not float because it is too heavy. One hundred and twenty five tons of excess that take you to the bottom of the ocean. A hitch costs a fool at the international level to Spain and costs taxpayers billions of dollars

And to think that everything is the fault of a "zero point" if the submarine which promised to be lighthouse becomes shameful national, the beacon of technology that risked yes to go down but not to go back up. An oversight that for the Spanish Navy is worth about 70 tons and four billion euros a submarine, almost twice the estimated cost at the beginning. It all started when the Iberian engineers discovered, a little too late, that the latest-generation S-80 Plus submarine was much heavier than expected. From there, the fear that once launched could flow without possibility of recovery. According to Rafael Bardaji, former head of the strategic office of the Spanish Ministry of Defense, "it is possible that an error was made in the calculation of the number of decimals in the initial project and that no one took the hardly check the calculations ". You did not say anything. An error that becomes irremediable, disastrous.

The panic and the time that is tightening, the brains at work to save the salvable, to design solutions at hand; part of the demand for Sos sent to the Electric Boat, an American company that provides naval consulting services to the US Army. And that's how we start to multiply costs; numbers going up, vertiginously. Initially, the goal of the engineers overseas was to lighten the 2,200-ton submarine and make it fit for navigation. Then, the best solution seemed to stretch the hull by 10 meters in order to increase its buoyancy.

Operation complicated but achievable. In 2013, work begins, until another serious problem arises: the nine dimensions of the underwater accident with a big, not quite like the port of Cartagena, in Murcia.

The original project involved a 71-meter and 2,200-tonne displacement vessel: now the S-80 Plus is a 81-meter and 3,000-tonne vessel. So here is the desperate search for an emergency solution: dredging and remodeling the port of Cartagena, for a cost of 14 million euros.

What is clear, it is this "zero point" that has escaped, it will weigh heavily on the already tested Spanish government, which certainly does not go through a happy period between the economic crisis and unemployment. The S80 project is too expensive.

Although the Iberian Ministry of Defense immediately downplayed them, arguing that the delays and cost increases of this entity should be considered normal for projects of this magnitude. Delivery of the four new S-80 clbad submarines is scheduled for September 2022, May 2024, March 2026 and July 2027. The replacement of the S-70 submarines with S-80s has been announced as a great opportunity. A country that wants to turn the corner, the project of the Ministry was to revive the industrial investment cycle. Today, it is likely to be a huge hole in the water.